Next Month Most Dangerous?

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 178, 29 July 1940, Page 7

Next Month Most Dangerous?

ATTACK ON BRITAIN Events In France Believed To Mean Attempt Is Near

OCCUPIED AREA CLOSED

(United Press Association.—Copyright.—Rec. noon.)

LONDON, July 28

The month ahead may be the most dangerous period," said Mr. Mac Donald, Minister of Health,' urging parents not to bring evacuated children home for the summer holidays. He stressed that casualties so far were much smaller in the country than in the towns.

The British United Press correspondent at Vichy says the Germans have closed road as well as rail traffic between occupied and unoccupied France. Some quarters consider the step indicates that operations against Britain from northern France are imminent.

An official French communique states: "The return of refugees to occupied zones and the transfer of Government services to Paris have been provisionally stopped."

The French radio announced that German-occupied France has been split up into five zones. Refugees are forbidden to enter or leave two of the most strategic areas. One embraces the Channel ports and the hinterland and the other takes in the Maginot Line from Switzerland to Belgium. Special permission to travel in other zones must be obtained and will only be granted to farmers, doctors, nurses and officials.

It is learned that trains are being held up at Moulins, preventing refugees, including 100 bank workers, reaching Paris. "Lord Haw-Haw," the English announcer on the Nazi radio, to-day repeats that the great attack against England is pnly a question of days and possibly hours. Coastal attacks made" so far are only a mild preliminary.

The Petain Government has protested energetically to Britain against leaflet air raids, says the Vichy correspondent of the Associated Press of Great Britain.